Microsoft 'proud' to demo Office in Firefox

Microsoft Australia information worker business group director Oscar Trimboli said he was "proud" to show Microsoft Office's web applications running in Firefox at the launch of Office 2010 in Sydney this morning.

Microsoft Australia information worker business group director Oscar Trimboli said he was "proud" to show Microsoft Office's web applications running in Firefox at the launch of Office 2010 in Sydney this morning.

In front of a large media audience in Dawes Point, Trimboli ran a demonstration of a streaming PowerPoint presentation using Mozilla's popular Firefox web browser rather than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer.

Trimboli said that despite colleagues at Microsoft advising him against including Firefox, showing browser compatibility was important.

"In the demonstration today, we actually were very deliberate [about showing Firefox]," he said. "We're quite proud about the fact that we've taken a step forward there."

Microsoft's corporate vice president of office business productivity group Kirk Koenigsbauer said Microsoft had changed tactics in allowing alternative web browser compatibility for Office.

"[With] this release of Office and SharePoint 2010 we have taken a broader view of browsers," Koenigsbauer said.